D J Lowbridge's personal blog for sharing news about his writing, articles he has written around the web and some of his interests (including crabbing)

Friday, 21 June 2013

6 Tips to Writing A Good Review

When I was writing the previous good post I found that I was
writing a lot of advice for writing reviews. It is something now that I have
been doing for nearly a year (with a short break for illness). Some people
think I am a good reviewer and I have had a couple of people ask me to give
them tips on writing a review. Now I don’t consider myself an expert, far from
it – I love books and reviewing is just the natural next step on that road.
There isn’t any real rocket science to writing one. However I do stick to several
key items when writing reviews however and here they are.

1.Be Honest

Honesty is the
best policy my mother always said and that is the number one fact. There is no
point in telling someone you love the book when you didn’t. For starters if it
is really a bad book, people will find out and your reputation will be
shattered. Do everyone a favour and be honest with yourself and the author.

2.Write in detail

I hate reviews
that are one sentence that simply say – “Loved this book” or “Worse book ever”.
For starters the second comment is unsubstantial (see point 3), unless you’ve
read every single book ever written: just to read the Amazon catalogue it would
take you 850 years to read every single book (and that is if you didn’t sleep,
eat, drink, go to the toilet). But to really make the point – you loved they
book? Why?

3.Substantiate your claims

So you didn’t
like the characters. Why? The main one was like a wooden peg, why? If you are
going to say something back it up. Was there a scene in which you felt was
unreasonable, explain that. By giving a concise reasoning behind your review
will make it shine against all the others.

4.Write in English

I’m not being
funny here – how many times have you seen: “I luv dis book – gr8 read”. Write
in Standard English – much easier to understand for all of us.

5.DON’T USE CAPITALS TOO MUCH

Was that enough
of a hint? You aren’t shouting your review across at the reader, you are gently
telling them about your experiences with the book. That is always done better
with a softer whisper and a lower case.

6.Write about the book not the author

I see so many
people who write about the author and not the book. You are reviewing a
product, stick to that and don’t wander off the subject. If the book has
spelling mistakes, say the book has spelling mistakes – don’t say the author
can’t be bothered or didn’t run it through a spellchecker or editor before
releasing it. You don’t really know they didn’t.

Hopefully this list has been some help to you. If you would
like to read some of my reviews, or a review by my colleague Jess Mountifield
you can visit our review blog here.

Some big announcements, excellent articles and chances for unique
engagement will be coming soon. To keep up with it all follow me on twitter and my facebook page

About Me

David is a freelance copywriter, online marketing consultant and a father of three. His online work has helped his clients to create digital marketing campaigns that have delivered strong leads and attracted national publications to contact them.

His latest venture, TwoFeetMarketing, is there to support small to medium businesses to learn how to run their online marketing campaigns cost effectively.